Slashdot Mirror
Here Comes the World's Biggest Shopping Spree -- Again (bloomberg.com)
A reader shares a report: On Nov. 11, China celebrates Singles Day, a holiday dedicated to the nation's unattached. It's also the world's largest shopping festival -- and a bonanza for internet giant Alibaba Group. Up to 500 million consumers will visit sites run by the company searching for discounts on items including Bordeaux wine, UGG boots, SUVs, and high-end Japanese toilets. Citigroup estimates that Alibaba's sales during this year's event could reach 158 billion yuan ($23.8 billion). For Alibaba, Singles Day will also be a demonstration of how far its cloud business has come in eight years. At the peak of activity, Alibaba's servers may be tasked with processing 175,000 transactions a second from its own sites. "It's the day when the largest amount of computing power is needed in China," says He Yunfei, a senior product manager for Alibaba Cloud. [...] Alibaba dominates the Chinese cloud -- in part because local regulators won't issue data center operating licenses to foreign companies, curtailing the China ambitions of Amazon.com and Microsoft, the No. 1 and No. 2 cloud providers globally.
It seems odd to wait to buy something until a holiday if you're single. If I was single, I'd just buy what I wanted when I wanted. :shrugs:
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It appears AliBaba (and other Chinese companies) have caught on to the American trick of using the government to guarantee their markets.
If you're planning to shop on Ali, keep it mind that the vendors there often raise prices prior to 11/11 and the real savings are slim or nonexistent.
IN RED CHINA, all business meetings end with:
Of course not! Heard what happened to the United States?
Much joyful laughter unfolds.
There has been speculation over whether Alibaba Group will eventually buy Amazon or Ebay. It's vastly larger than Amazon and commands a larger share of the online shopping market, so it has the muscle to snap up smaller outlets like those 2 if it wants to expand and reduce its competition. The group has been acquiring other online brokers over time, so it's not without potentiality.
Singles Day is certainly the largest shopping day and has been for some while, but Alibaba Group is huge anyway, with or without Singles Day. In a sense Alibaba Group already powers Amazon and Ebay both. Much of the sellers on those outlets simply buy from Alibaba and sell at a small markup on Amazon or Ebay. There's little reason at end of day to support a middleman skimming off the margins.
... for IoT botnet?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
NOW
If you don't let stuff in, stuff shouldn't get out either.
11/11 is also "Pocky Day", because 11 11 looks like four of them.
#DeleteFacebook
Am I the only one that misread the title as "shooting spree"?
I mean, it happens with such depressing regularity...
The rest of the world outside China: "Who cares?"
Big seller over there are $4k anatomically correct and life like female silicone dolls because for some odd reason there's way more males than females of marrying age. It's either that or turn gay. Lot of lonely guys in China.
I'm excited about another great year of Black Friday shopping! I mean, I already bought the pepper spray I'm going to use on other shoppers and everything! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So Japanese mothers are getting rent-a-dads and Chinese bachelors are celebrating the shortage of women caused by their parents. I suppose the Chinese men need to be distracted from the fact that 10% of them will never be normal, by never getting married. I suppose the Chinese parents should be happy, without a wife and child, their son has money to spend on his parents.
It's interesting that Asian culture is adjusting to the shortage of married men and how they're doing it. In New Zealand, rich women are marrying poor men but no other Western culture is adopting that solution.
..... yet the western nations are falling over themselves to sell their own countries out from under themselves to the Chinese ?
This will end badly.
It is amazing a region as small as Bordeaux is able to supply that many China's singles in wine.
Complete and utter bullshit. You think all the Chinese people waiting for weeks/months even to buy something on special wouldn't notice the actual price? You're full of shit.